LEEDS HAS been forced to cut spending Christmas lights by hundreds of thousands of pounds in the wake of budget cuts, the Yorkshire Evening Post has found.

A request made under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that Leeds has reduced the budget for lights and decorations by over £200,000 since 2009. This year it spent £404,890, compared with the £663,834 total five years ago.

The reduction has been put down to increased pressure on local authority budgets which have been imposed since the coalition government came into power in 2010.

On the day after Sir Tom Finney, the Preston North End legend and a player widely regarded as one of the gentlemen of the game, died BBC Radio Five Live broadcast its Saturday sports coverage from Deepdale, the home of North End.

It was a touching tribute to one of the greats of the game who earned his reputation in a different era of football. That point was summed up when the story about a transfer which never happened was discussed on air.

Sir Tom was wanted by Palermo, the Sicilian side, in 1952 and reports suggested they were prepared to offer Preston £30,000 for his signature, pay Sir Tom much more than he was earning in Preston, throw in a villa and pay for travel between Italy and Preston for his family.

The story goes that then-chairman Nat Buck quashed the deal, saying: “If tha’ doesn’t play for us, tha’ doesn’t play for anybody.” On hearing the story, Five Live presenter Mark Pougatch made the point: “So different from today, it was a time when the administrators ran football.”

Yet in an era when player power clearly does have the upper hand in football, certainly in the top two leagues, journalists and local media can often find themselves at the mercy of excessive demands and expectations of football club administrators in guise of media management. That, in turn, runs the risk of damaging the most important relationship of all: Our relationship with fans.

From insisting all player interview requests go through the club or only making the manager available for one interview a week, to insisting that all news is broken on the club site first and or placing digital embargoes on content which don’t apply to print to ensure the clubs have online exclusives, the demands from many football clubs are little short of draconian.

Journalists get a lot of stick for the way FOI is used to generate stories, but there are very few who disagree with the principle that FOI should help hold authorities to account. That’s how FOI used by the regional Press can make a difference. Each week when I am compiling FOI Friday, I find lots of examples of great FOIs which don’t really fit the bill for FOI Friday as they are unique to one area and hard to replicate elsewhere.

So, this week, I thought I’d share 10 FOI stories I’ve seen which fit the bill of having the potential to make a difference:

Victims of crime in Norfolk have been awarded compensation payments of up to £370,000 for injuries including a broken arm, collapsed lung, and even serious brain damage, new figures have revealed.

Data from the Criminal Injury Compensation Authority (CICA) show that in the past three years it has awarded payouts totalling £5.8 million to victims of crime in the county.

The list of more than 850 payouts, obtained by a Freedom of Information request, includes compensation for injuries including £370,000 for moderate brain damage, £43,500 for the loss of an eye and £93,000 for a permanent back injury.

Obses toddlers are among almost 100 Welsh children deemed so fat they have been taken into HOSPITAL for treatment, WalesOnline can today reveal.

Dozens of kids – some just pre-school age – have been admitted to hospital with a primary diagnosis of obesity in recent years, according to the nation’s health boards, with some treated for ‘extreme obesity’ so serious it could lead to heart failure.

At least 97 children aged under 15 have been diagnosed as so overweight that they needed round-the-clock care from doctors and nurses – a statistic branded “repugnant” by chair of the Child Growth Foundation Tam Fry.

And it was all going so well. 11 days, 11 numerically-themed pieces which look at different aspects of the regional and local press. And then I get to day 12 – it should be the easiest of the lot, 12 great front pages.

I didn’t want to do just 12 front pages I liked – I’d probably be biased towards titles I work with, which maybe I am in the list below anyway – because that would too subjective. Instead, I wanted to do 12 front pages which showed the regional Press off at its best, but which also told stories about the way the regional Press is going, or where it’s come from.

And so I end up with 20 (more if you include the others I’ve referenced here too). That’s the beauty of grammar I guess – I’ve just moved the colon in the headline a bit so it’s still correct – it is the 12th post, it’s just far more than 12 front pages.

Rows between football clubs and local newspapers are nothing new. But in 2013, I believe we saw a shifting of the sands which will eventually change the way we cover football clubs for the better.

A quick appeal on Twitter earlier this week asking for football clubs which had fallen out with, or banned, their local newspaper, brought a swift selection to choose from.

So what does it all mean? To me, it’s proof that the regional press needs to become a more vocal, independent voice on matters relating to their football club, and less scared of the threat which hangs over many relationships that if the paper steps out of line, privileges will be withdrawn.

The question I would pose in that situation is ‘What special privileges do we get these days?’ In many cases, but by no means all, the answer is not very much. I know of football clubs which stick 11am embargoes on ‘exclusive’ interviews for regional press websites, even though it’s appeared in the print edition at 6am. The five-hour window is normally to give the club website ‘exclusive’ digital content.

The clubs now consider themselves content providers, connecting directly with fans and, in many ways, competing with us. There’s a lot the local media can learn from some of the things clubs do – full coverage of the press conference online within minutes – but there’s also one big thing the club’s can’t hope to compete with us on – our independence, which is valued by fans who criticise when they feel we’re too close to clubs and not speaking out when we should.

SCHOOLS, leisure centres and public toilets are among more than 1,000 council-owned buildings in North Wales which contain asbestos.

A Freedom of Information request by the Daily Post has revealed that all types of the dangerous substance which is now illegal to use – are found in buildings across the region including the most hazardous material, crocidolite.

The figures showed Gwynedd to have the highest number of buildings containing asbestos with 409 in total, which included Arfon Leisure Centre in Caernarfon, Bangor Swimming Pool and Hafod Y Gest care home in Porthmadog.